Friday, June 8, 2007 The bus down the mountain got old fast. It was an old bus and it stopped all the time to pick up people. It was slow and rough and irritable-making. In a way, this explains the look on Cristine's face here. I was suppressing my terror and frustration. We went to two places in Nicaragua, first the city of Granada, oldest (European-established) city in all of the American continents, situated on the shores of Lago de Nicaragua, then all the way out to the Carribean coast and offshore to the Corn Islands.

Some general thoughts and observations on Nicaragua:

from Saturday, June 9, 2007:
In part because there is no one-colón piece, many bills in CR are simply rounded up or down. Change is given approximately, tip is included. Contrast this with Nicaragua where a 10% tip at restaurants is standard and though things are often denominated in whole córdobas (perhaps so far in part due to the tourism here) there are centavos, the smallest I've seen being 5 centavos.

from Monday, June 11, 2007:
In both Nicaragua and Costa Rica there are dogs everywhere. In CR almost none of them had collars and many roamed in packs of 4-5. Here they're all running solo, but a few are collared and even leashed. But still, there are many all over. They seem to be very calm and tame, just hanging out in the heat. I imagine most are cared for, but it's unclear by whom.

from Tuesday, June 12, 2007 (Managua Airport)
Cars and driving are also interesting aspects of a culture. The shuttle (really, taxi) driver was 15 minutes late to get us, but drove so fast (often 110-120 kph, regardless of the 60-80 kph limit) we arrived ~6-7 minutes sooner than expected. Passing buses, even on a solid yellow line, seemed like nothing. At one point, as what I assume was a legitimate part of the trip, we cut through these slow road residential passes to get to another highway doubling back on the one we were on to suddenly enter the eastern edge of Managua and quickly find the airport.

I've also picked up the system of license plates on the cars. Every plate starts with a set system of letters, based on the department (like counties) it's registered in. Granada is GR, Managua is M, Masaya is MY, and I saw CZ for another nearby department, but have forgotten what I saw it was on a map. I think I also saw R, which should be Rivas. I wonder if this will hold on the Corn Islands (RAAS? Región Autonomina de Atlantico Sur?). All letters are followed by a 4-digit number set. I found out later that it's RS and the plates are red, not blue.

Back to Friday, June 8, 2007 ...we were dealing with the border crossing and spending the last of our colones (we did – down to the last one!). We went through exiting CR, reboarded the bus, slowly drove a few hundred meters (handing over our passports and $8), exited again, and collected our bags for checking. They liked us apparently and we were soon waiting to simply reboard. Then it was another two hours to Granada...

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